The end of a calendar year always brings with it a host of Best of...Worst of....Biggest story.....media pieces. Recaps, if you will, of the previous 12 months in news significantly affecting the nation. The Reverend doesn't have a list this year, but I do want to review what I think has been the most disturbing story of 2012.

Earlier in the year, the GOP presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, was unknowingly taped at a big-donor fundraiser. While answering questions, Mr. Romney responded at one point that....

Remember when Sandra Fluke was made into a national figure by the America-hating, Rush-Off-At-The-Mouth Limbaugh? Good times. For three straight days, the conservative godfather of victimization vented his nastiness by calling the young woman whom he did not know every vulgar name the FCC would allow.

Limbaugh most likely thought that he was reinforcing the spines of many of his misogynist listeners oh-so-disappointed over losing the battle over Obamacare. Whatever the case might have been for the round mound of disinformation.....Mr. Limbaugh, without doubt, helped Democrats hold the White House and make gains in Congress. Thanks ElRushbo.

All the Kewlest Village Kidz love themselves some bipartisanship. If those silly, silly congresscritters would just do the bipartisanship fist bump and keep those wretched tax rates low, lower and lowest for "job creators".....then all things in the cosmos would once again be in sync.

No matter that the not-quite-American in the Oval Office won his second landslide electoral college win in 4 years...or that Democrats gained Senate and House seats in a cycle....and an economy....when odds were against that happening. No matter....because the Village has determined, not sure exactly how, that what American voters were really voting for was....can you guess?.....bipartisanship.

Between 2007 and 2010, the median net worth of U.S. households fell by 47 percent, reaching its lowest level in more than forty years, adjusted for inflation. In other words, middle class wealth virtually evaporated in this country. A good chunk of the population got sucked through a financial wormhole back to the sixties.

Even the conservative, investor class-favoring Federal Reserve has average net worth dropping 39% from 2007-2010....

'British citizen and CNN television host Piers Morgan is engaged in a hostile attack against the U.S. Constitution by targeting the Second Amendment. We demand that Mr. Morgan be deported immediately for his effort to undermine the Bill of Rights and for exploiting his position as a national network television host to stage attacks against the rights of American citizens.'

The above petition to deport Piers Morgan currently has 70,000 "signatures" online.

Last night Speaker Boehner did not have enough Republican votes in the House to raise income tax rates on the top .19% millionaires-or-better crowd. Yet Boehner did have enough GOP votes last night to pass a going-nowhere bill to cut food stamps, Meals on Wheels, funding to Obamacare exchanges, Medicaid and specific Child Tax Credits.

Fear of Muslims....fear of Obama taking guns away....fear of an imminent economic collapse in the U.S.....fear of big gubmint.....has led those who are afraid....to buy more guns. With this subset of Americans, the proper response to fear, or tragedy, is to introduce more guns.

November 2012 saw a 38.5% increase in background checks to purchase guns over November 2011 background check totals.....and that was a 61.9% increase over November 2010. Immediately following each mass shooting, whether in Colorado, Wisconsin, Arizona or Connecticut, background checks and gun purchases have spiked across the 50 states. It's almost as if gun massacres in the U.S. are the gun industry's best form of advertisement. As sick as that may sound.

Two AB Journal letters to the editor today.....one by a Reverend that's not me....point out what I also saw in Sunday's Beacon on page A-9. In the same A-section of the paper which featured the Newtown tragedy, publishers saw fit to print a half-page ad from Buckeye Firearms which featured two pictures of the very semi-automatic assault rifle Adam Lanza used to slaughter 6-7 year old first graders last Friday. Shameless.....and sick.

Now it's the culture.....or Hollywood movies, you know, the vividly gruesome and gory ones....or maybe....I know....it's video games. Yeah, that's it. Those goddamn shoot 'em up video games that the lazy, shiftless, underemployed youth play 24/7. That's got to be it.

Young males obtain military-grade weapons and slaughter theater goers, political event attendees or first graders.....and it's our "culture of violence" as witnessed in movies and video games that is blamed.

Both Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein and retiring independent Senator Joe Lieberman called yesterday for a renewal of the assault weapons ban. The ban was allowed to expire in 2004 during the Bush presidency, when Republicans controlled Congress. While I suppose legislation once again outlawing military-style weaponry has a chance of passing....I wouldn't bet the farm on it. I just don't see the Republican House going along....hope I'm wrong.

Yesterday, following yet another gun-related mass murder, this time in Connecticut, President Obama ordered all flags on government properties be flown at half mast. The president was visibly emotional when he announced the order.

Newspaper headlines today include words like horror, trauma, massacre, slaughter and evil. But no words can fully capture the darkness that descended over an elementary school in Connecticut yesterday morning at 9:30 AM. No words.

Blame the Framers, blame whoever you want to blame....but the majority in the U.S. do not have final say. In fact, truth be told, the minority....if they have a mind to....can almost always have their way.

One of the causes of our nation's Great Polarization Age is the dismal and utter failure of corporate media. It's one of the reasons why bloggers came to be. If Time, Newsweek, the Washington Post, the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, Fox, ABC.....you get the idea.....if those once-respected sources of information wouldn't or couldn't tell people the truth, someone had to.

For me, the last straw was the Iraq Lie. In late 2002, early 2003 I felt like I was in suspended animation as I daily watched and listened to the onslaught of rumors, gossip, deceptions and yes, lies...outright lies.....about how Iraq was an "imminent threat" to the U.S. with it's chemical, biological, and nuclear WMD's. Corporate media led the charge to invade Iraq. Corporate media convinced Americans that Saddam was a direct and immediate threat to not only the Middle East, but also the U.S.....and that Saddam, maybe, sorta, somehow bumped fists with them there terrorists.

Remember Shirley Sherrod? She was the Agricultural Department employee targeted by the....umm....more excitable.....elements in the conservative media propaganda regime.

Within Sherrod's speech which Breitbart's monsters so wickedly edited to oust the Agricultural Department employee and embarrass the Kenyan Imposter sitting in the White House, Ms. Sherrod stated a profound truth. A truth about how American power works.

During the presidential campaign Democrats made political hay using Mitt Romney's "47%" comment as the hay baler. One month after Mitt Romney was soundly defeated, it seems that a good portion of the conservative choir wants to keep singing Mitt's 47% song. Time to review......here is the infamous Romney quote in its entirety....

"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it -- that that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. ... These are people who pay no income tax. ... [M]y job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

Last March, House Budget Committee members Justin Amash (R-MI) and Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) voted against Paul Ryan's 2013 House budget resolution. So did all 16 Democrats sitting on the Committee. The measure passed out of committee 19-18 and was later passed by the House without any Democratic votes. The Ryan budget resolution died there in the House.

Republicans Amash and Huelskamp didn't vote against Ryan's budget resolution in Committee because they aren't sufficiently, or severely, conservative....they are. They voted against the Ryan budget because it wasn't extreme enough.

One paragraph from a letter to the editor in today's Akron Beacon Journal.....

"What is clear to me is that this country is in deep financial trouble. And the trouble is not Wall Street"s fault, and it is not China's fault, and it's not the demonized 1 percent's fault. It is our fault. We simply want way, way, more than we are willing to pay for."

During the presidential campaign, GOP candidate Mitt Romney was criticized for refusing to list which tax deductions and loopholes he would push Congress to eliminate in order to offset his 20% across-the-board tax cutting plan.

The 20% across-the-board tax cuts, Romney said, absolutely had to be revenue neutral...not adding anything to the national debt. Mr. Romney told Americans that he would offset the deep new tax cuts by closing tax deductions for the wealthy.